There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this⁠—the place was a seething cauldron of passion, and the “scab” who ventured into it fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was a strike, and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched battles fought at night, by the light of blazing freight-trains. Packingtown was always a centre of violence; in “Whiskey Point,” where there were a hundred saloons and one glue-factory, there was always fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Anyone who had taken the trouble to consult the station-house blotter would have found that there was less violence that summer than ever before⁠—and this while twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day but brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle the union leaders were fighting⁠—to hold this huge army in rank, to keep it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.